


checkmate

by theantepenultimateriddle



Series: Snow and Ash [2]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/F, More of the fae au, alt desperate measures kinda? Alt universe, i love this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 18:58:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11720499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theantepenultimateriddle/pseuds/theantepenultimateriddle
Summary: The king kills her in front of you.





	checkmate

_As I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I shall fear no evil, I shall fear no iron and I shall fear no salt, I shall fear no kings or queens or rules, I shall fear no more your pain._

_Ten._

_Nine._  
Eight.  
Seven six fivefourthreetwo

 _O N E_.

The king kills her in front of you, her skull shattering, brittle bones after all and not the gemstones you made her out to be. You scream, your anguish ringing from your throat, the squeal of metal and crack of sea ice and the roaring of the fire she built in you shaking the ground and leaves on the trees. You scream, you scream, you scream, and it makes no difference in your impotent rage. Her blood is wet on your hands and in your mind.

The smile on his face is nothing like the smile on her corpse, one much crueler to you than the other, the knife in your side of your own make.

The thorn in your heart comes from your own rose bush.

He kills your queen and you kill his bishop and capture his knight, tipping his throne. He throws his crown down on the floor and his arms up in the air, a mock performance of a surrender even as you force checkmate. White and black squares blur into uniform gray under your sore feet.

She deserved better, is what you think as you cover her in a shroud of spiderwebs and tears, muffle the silent acceptance of her shattered face in woven nettles and your love. You build her a tomb in the stone and dirt of your soul, digging in the frozen wasteland a hole in her shape and filling it with hot coals. Your stomach burns as your run your thumb over the dead skin of her lips, and you don’t cry, because your tears will not bring back her voice of silk and silver. _Lovelace, darling, I did not know mine was the kiss of death._

Her touch still melts and burns you, even when there is no stinging bane behind her eyes of glass and reflected moonlight.

You bury her in her tomb, you bury her in her shroud, you bury her in a coffin of your bones. You say your words over her grave and think about how she deserves better than the Reaper’s scythe, deserved better than your form frozen in indecision. You bind the king in his own words and in the trailing creepers that grow from her body, you bind him in rime and in rhyme and rhythm, and you listen to the chirp and rustle and song of the forest around you. You have become the king of the woods, the king of a world always just a strike of a match away from disaster. King of ash. King of pain. King. King. King, the weakest piece on the board, perfect for a girl with no control, a girl made of nothing but pressure points and weaknesses.

You look away for a moment and when you turn around she breathes, her bones knitting themselves back together, a tree cutting putting down new roots in the soil. Her chest rises and falls, her heart beats out of her ribs, her eyes open in a radioactive glow. Her hands burn the exiled emperor’s armored shell and his arm drops off in a shriveled husk. She rises. She floats. She combusts infinitely, a perpetual explosion.

The queen is dead.

Long live your queen.

 


End file.
